On a scale of one to ten, I give getting a classroom ready for back-to-school a ten. What do you think? There’s plenty to do before that first day of school, that’s for sure—deciding on a classroom theme and readying the classroom, preparing lesson plans, completing paperwork, and the list goes on and on. Plus let’s not forget catching up with former colleagues and welcoming new ones!
I’m not sure when I began to ponder my back-to-school theme each year. I call it my back-to-school theme, but now that I think about it, the theme never went away! One year I had a frog theme. I used flamingos another year. And the year my class was loaded up with boys, I chose swashbuckling parrots. That was a big hit!
One of my faves was “All Aboard the Badden Express!” (Badden is my last name). If I remember right, my classroom train had three or maybe four boxcars. On the first day of school, student names and self-portraits were posted on the cars. In October, the cargo changed to student-made pumpkins and pumpkin stories. At one point the boxcars sported book reports and carried character look-alikes. And when the end of the year rolled around, the train carried large student-decorated star cutouts and the students’ written accounts of their favorite memories from the school year.
Anyway, enough of my rambling! Let’s hear about your favorite back-to-school (or year-round) themes.
All aboard!
Diane
I actually do 2 themes every year. I start off with “The Kissing Hand” for the first week of school. I have a lot of cute activities in this unit and it is too much to do in one day especially to have time to teach routines. The first week of school is usually such a short week anyway. After that I do an M&M theme where I review the preschool colors, shapes, numbers for the next 2 weeks.
Your M&M theme sounds interesting. What do you do? I am always looking for new ideas. I teach Kindergarten. Thanks for sharing.
Every subject is M&Ms. In Math, we count M&Ms, make shapes with them, categorize them (color, shape using different types of M&Ms, patterns, graph favorite color…In Reading, I go over the color words and make letters with them, and talk about the letter M, and write about other activities with sentence frames. In Science, we talk about sink and float, we taste different types of M&ms and graph if they like/dislike, and we put them in water to see what will happen. In Art, we make M&M guys with basic shapes, make M&M hats with different color M&Ms (construction paper circles, as well as other center games. What do the rest of you do?
I plan to do a frog theme this year. We are going to do an author study with Jonathan London. I will also do a genre study of fairy tales using E.D.Baker The Frog Princess. Does anyone have any other suggestions of books or authors? Thanks for your help.
I start my year with 2 1/2 year olds with a teddy bear theme (which continues throughout the year). I have a Teddy Bear Goes to Preschool book, and we have a teddy bear picnic day when the kids can bring bears, or other stuffed friends, from home. Some other activities we do are teddy bear matching games, textures teddy bear paw matching, a Corduroy overall button game, and fingerpaint bears with chocolate pudding.
Last year I did a Cooking theme”Cooking Up a Great Year”. The children made chef hats, and a chef puppet. It was great for building classroom and school rules. Each month we did a different cooking activity that went along with reading themes or measurement activities for Math. The children loved it! I’m thinking of doing the same thing but usually use a different theme each year.
I would also be interested in more information about the M&M theme.
I, too, would like to know more about the M&M theme. It sounds really cute and exciting. I use M&Ms at the beginning of the year as reinforcements for following the new (to my kindergartners) rules.
One year we did Fishing for Success. We have yearlong whole school themes. I had the children create ocean diaramas the first two weeks of school. They did this as a Family Project. Another year, we did Reaching for the Stars.
i would like to know more about the many activities you have for the Kissing Hand, as I also do that the firs days of school. I also do Miss Bindergarten Got Ready for Kindergarten, with accompanying activities including a clas book called We Got Ready for Kindergarten.
One year I had a watermelon theme with a cute bulletin board and activities like writing, sink or float, estimating and measuring, etc. A fellow teacher, by chance, also had a watermelon theme, so we concluded the first week of school with a seed-spitting contest. It was great fun!
I will be moving from teaching Pre-K to teaching Kdg. this year; with the new movie Toy Story 3 coming out,my assistant and I decided to invite our future Kdg. students to see the moview opening weekend with us. It was great fun and a nice ice breaker for the students to meet their new teachers. We will be decorating the classroom with the movie characters and using many messages from the movie in our teaching. It should be an exciting year!
i would love to here about any bulletin board ideas for back to school. my classroom has dots painted on the walls and last year i did a bb of “This is a great class and “dots” the truth! anybody have any helpful ideas? i like to do these kind rather than bb kits u buy!! help please!!!!!!!!!!!!
I need ideas for a rainforest theme
I teach pre-K at a church preschool. I really need some ideas for our Christmas “Reason for the Season” project. Does anyone know of a reputable charity that would accept simple donations ie inexpensive items that our children and families could easily afford and collect? Our church sponsors an angel tree so I would prefer other ideas. The cost of shipping items to a charity is fine as our church will pay but I don’t want my families to be stressed financially yet I want the children to participate in a charity project.
I am a total Wizard of Oz freak! Plus I love the color purple. We were allowed to paint my classroom this summer and of course it is lilac! I am painting the yellow brick road around the room with the Emerald City (Success) at the end of the road. I teach math only, so on the outside of the room the yellow brick road will begin w/ cricut vinyl letters that read(our school is called IMAGINE)Imagine following the yellow brick road to SUCCESS in math. Along the road I will have white signs on a fence post (all painted) that have different math concepts. On day one the children will make a munchkin with their name,these are used on the job board. They are given wizard bucks as their reward system, cashed in for prizes. I am sure there are a lot more things I can do but, it is still in the making. Maybe I’ll paint the main characters and emphasize different math ideas, like “time” with Dorothy have different clocks around her including an hour glass.
We are doing a school wide farm theme – “Cultivating a Community of success” – would LOVE suggestions!
For my prek class I use apples. I love to die cut my own things so I put up a bushel basket and a tree and die cut apples for the tree and put all the kids names on them. Because its preK I generally start the year off learning about each other and names so its a perfect fit.
Hey Deb have you thought of contacting a local women’s shelter for your Christmas project. Usually they also shelter children and they have a great many needs.
I usually end my kindergarten year with a beach theme but this year I have decided to open the year with a beach theme, realizing that many of my students would have gone to the beach over the summer. It will be a good way to stimulate some good conversation. We will send a letter to the students before school starts with a picture of my co-teacher and myself with sunglasses and straw hats on. Also, our bulletin board as well as other theme activities will focus on “Come Swim in Our School” and have fish and other sea creatures, etc.
Wow — there are some awesome ideas on here!
I normally don’t have a theme (other than school days) when the year begins, but I think I will go with a theme now. I normally don’t start a theme until 2 weeks into the year.
Cecelia — what other types of fairy tales are you looking for? Do they need to have a frog in the story? (The fairy tale theme is my absolute favorite!!!)
Beth — bulletin board ideas: Popcorn–Look who’s popping into class; Transportation–Flying into a new year (airplanes), Birds –Flying into a new year; Fall Season –Falling into a new year; Frogs– Leap into Learning; Farm–Growing a great crop; Ocean–Swimming our way into a great year (fish). Dollar stores have lots of inexpensive items for bulletin boards, and just walking around the stores can give you some great ideas.
this reply is for Beth, who was looking for ideas for her bb to coincide with the dots on her wall. Why don’t you go with the word “spot”. We “spot” future leaders,learners etc.
B, try your local party supply store and look for table coverings that might fit a rainforest theme.
My welcome back bulletin board is “Look who’s sailing into kindergarten!” Sailboat cutouts have my own and the kids’ names on them. I found a 50 foot long table covering that looks like water at the local party supply store for about $15; it wraps around two walls and makes us feel like we’re in the ocean. Purchased fish cutouts hang from the ceiling. My reading corner is a wooden boat that my husband and his friend made for me.
Joan, I’ll use your Fishing for Success idea for a good work and good behavior bulletin board.
Anita, do you follow NASCAR? M&M is the major sponsor for Kyle Busch in his Sprint Cup Car. You should check out his website. Maybe you could incorporate map skills by following where he races each weekend and graph where he places. Maybe you could join his fan club and they would send you some m&m stuff for your room or for you to wear. Do you do a guess and count? Have the children pick up a handful of something (in your case m&ms), keep it closed and guess how many they are holding. Record the guess then drop and count. Draw a picture of how many they actually have and record the number. Then compare if it was more, less, or the same as their original guess. I like to do this for several days in a row using the same thing to see which children begin adjusting their guess based on their previous experience.
Beth, another idea using the word spot would be…
Kindergarten is a great SPOT to be! I use a dog theme throughout the year and I call my kindergartners BIG DOGS (Disciples of God). One year I cut out large colorful construction paper circles and a dalmation for each child. (I had a dalmation in several positions I got from a coloring book so they did not all look the same.)I put the dalmation on/near a circle and printed each child’s name with an outline using Printshop and placed it beside the spot. I took pics of each child and put it next to his spot and eventually added a piece of his work.
Some ways to incorporate your theme…
-Make a pathway leading to your door with theme like symbols (I use dog bones and dog prints).
-Place a themed display outside your room (A parent made me a large painted wooden frame that fits in the door frame which makes it look like the children are walking into a doghouse-GREAT for pictures) If doing the beach theme, a beach chair, towel and umbrella etc
-Collect a list of theme related words and phrases to use in your communication/awards/bulletin boards (dog-gone, paws for good work, tail-waggin’, bow wow!)
-Use an item related to your theme to give each row or group to use to show who is the helper for the group that day to pass out/collect papers and to name the group (I use small stuffed dogs of different breeds and call them my helping hounds).
Deb – you said you needed charity ideas for your class for Christmas . . .
Operation Christmas Child
Toys for Tots
Make A Wish Foundation
Adopt a local family (I think this can be done through the Salvation Army)
For Deb,
Try Samaritans Purse and their Christmas Child project,,,we do this every year. I send a letter home with the children to shop at the dollar store and choose one item (many purchase quite a few) and we fill a shoe box together and they go to children around the world. It is a great learning experience and the children help with the shopping, filling the boxes and wrapping and some parents even donate the money for the boxes to be shipped. It is a christian based organization and if you go on their website you will see there are many different ways to help….
I teach prek and I always do the theme “Welcome to the Hive” and continue through the year as Busy Bees. I have a stuffed bee called Buzzy. each child gets to take it home for a weekend and write about what they did with Buzzy and return on Monday to share with the class.
My classroom is the Frogs, each class at my school has an animal name. I think I have just about everything there is with a frog on it. This year I found birthday crowns with frogs. I wanted a little something different this year- frogs are still everywhere- so I choose Dr. Seuss. I bought everything that I could find from welcome posters to nameplates. All I need now is a stuffed Cat In The Hat to go with my stuffed frog.
I am changing from a beach theme to a roller coaster-theme park theme this year. Beach things were so easy to find and come up with fun ideas. This one is much harder, and I’m having to make a lot from scratch. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!
Jane,
I would like to see photos of your Toy Story Theme. I am “toying” around with that theme this year also. I am also tossing around a Bubble or Fuzzy Friends (Monster) theme. I need to narrow my ideas down soon. I thought of hanging the red monkeys from the ceiling with children’s names on them. Lego shape cut outs on the bulletin board or even bubbles with their names on it. I guess I am going more toward the classic toys that kids love – Legos, bubbles, slinkies, and red hanging monkeys. Anyone have more ideas?
Deb –
Here are some charity ideas:
Operation Christmas Child
Toys for Tots
Make a Wish Foundation
adopt a local family for the holidays (Salvation Army)
Ruth, If you have any fairy tales or fantasy book ideas with frogs I would appreciate it. What about nonfiction books as well. Thanks for any help you can give me.
HI!
Last year I was in the “Bee” Room and this year I am in the “Bear” Room. I am at a loss of a Back to School Theme. Last year I did the traditional Apple/Back to School theme. Looking forward to reading the blog for some ideas.
I teach preschool in my family day care home and I first look to see what “Welcome Back” theme my Aug/Sept Mailbox Mag has picked. Sometimes I like it and sometimes not so much. This year it’s right on the money as many of my little guys are very interested in farm animals and we’d recently visited a dairy. I will incorporate many of Mailbox ideas along with some of my own and set up a field trip to a farm, as well. Thanks for the jumping off point! Linda
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